Proposed statement of position : amendments to specific AICPA pronouncements for changes related to the NAIC codification ;Amendments to specific AICPA pronouncements for changes related to the NAIC codification; Exposure draft (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants), 2001, Apr. 2

This proposed AICPA Statement of Position (SOP) amends AICPA SOP 94-5, Disclosures of Certain Matters in the Financial Statements of Insurance Enterprises, as a result of the completion of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) Codification of statutory accounting practices for certain insurance enterprises. The amendments to SOP 94-5 included in this proposed SOP would require insurance enterprises to disclose, at the date each balance sheet is presented, beginning with financial statements for fiscal years beginning on or after January 1, 2001, a description of the prescribed or permitted statutory accounting practice and the related monetary effect on statutory surplus of using an accounting practice that differs from either state-prescribed statutory accounting practices or NAIC statutory accounting practices. Retroactive application is not permitted. Those disclosures should be made if (a) state-prescribed statutory accounting practices differ from NAIC statutory accounting practices or (b) permitted state statutory accounting practices differ from either state prescribed statutory accounting practices or NAIC statutory accounting practices, and the use of prescribed or permitted statutory accounting practices (individually or in the aggregate) results in reported statutory surplus or risk-based capital that is materially different from the statutory surplus or risk-based capital that would have been reported had NAIC statutory accounting practices been followed. This proposed SOP\u27 also includes the following auditing guidance that has been updated as a result of the completion of the NAIC Codification: AICPA SOP 95-5, Auditor\u27s Reporting on Statutory Financial Statements of Insurance Enterprises, and SOP 94-1, Inquiries of State Insurance Regulators; and AICPA Auditing Interpretation No. 12, Evaluation of the Appropriateness of Informative Disclosures in Insurance Enterprises\u27 Financial Statements Prepared on a Statutory Basis, of Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) 62, Special Reports (AICPA, Professional Standards, vol. 1, AU sec. 9623.60-.77). The included auditing guidance has been approved by the Auditing Standards Board. This proposed SOP is effective for financial statements and audits of financial statements for fiscal years beginning on or after January 1, 2001. If comparative financial statements are presented for fiscal years beginning before January 1, 2001, the disclosure provisions of SOP 94-5 effective prior to this SOP apply to permitted statutory accounting practices by the domiciliary state insurance department.https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aicpa_sop/1280/thumbnail.jp

Gender Differences in Russian Colour Naming

In the present study we explored Russian colour naming in a web-based psycholinguistic experiment (http://www.colournaming.com). Colour singletons representing the Munsell Color Solid (N=600 in total) were presented on a computer monitor and named using an unconstrained colour-naming method. Respondents were Russian speakers (N=713). For gender-split equal-size samples (NF=333, NM=333) we estimated and compared (i) location of centroids of 12 Russian basic colour terms (BCTs); (ii) the number of words in colour descriptors; (iii) occurrences of BCTs most frequent non-BCTs. We found a close correspondence between females’ and males’ BCT centroids. Among individual BCTs, the highest inter-gender agreement was for seryj ‘grey’ and goluboj ‘light blue’, while the lowest was for sinij ‘dark blue’ and krasnyj ‘red’. Females revealed a significantly richer repertory of distinct colour descriptors, with great variety of monolexemic non-BCTs and “fancy” colour names; in comparison, males offered relatively more BCTs or their compounds. Along with these measures, we gauged denotata of most frequent CTs, reflected by linguistic segmentation of colour space, by employing a synthetic observer trained by gender-specific responses. This psycholinguistic representation revealed females’ more refined linguistic segmentation, compared to males, with higher linguistic density predominantly along the redgreen axis of colour space

The Role of Internal Capital Markets in Financial Intermediaries: Evidence From Insurer Groups

We exploit the transparency of internal capital markets (ICMs) within insurance groups to investigate the activity and efficiency of ICMs within insurance groups. Specifically, we compare the relationship between internal capital transfers and investment to that between capital from other sources and investment. The ability to track the actual ICM transactions allows for more direct analysis of ICM activity than most previous studies. Consistent with theory, we find evidence that ICMs play a significant role in the investment behavior of affiliated insurers. We then use these detailed data to execute a more direct test of ICM efficiency than currently exists in the literature. Consistent with ICM efficiency, results suggest that capital is allocated to subsidiaries with the best expected performance. Copyright (c) The Journal of Risk and Insurance, 2008.